Search and rescue members inspect a tree that fell on two homes on Roycroft Avenue in Long Beach, CA on Friday, February 17, 2017. The damage appeared to be minor. (Photo by Scott Varley/Press-Telegram/SCNG)

A man with an umbrella takes shelter from the rain along Pine Avenue in Long Beach, CA on Friday, February 17, 2017. (Photo by Scott Varley/Press-Telegram/SCNG)

Around 5:30 p.m., a swift-water rescue crew pulled a driver from a car when the vehicle got stuck in a flooded intersection at Los Coyotes Diagonal and Pacific Coast Highway.

About five minutes later, a man got trapped in a parked car near Pacific Coast Highway and Outer Traffic Circle when a tree crashed into some power lines and then toppled onto the vehicle, bringing the wires with it, Miller said.

The man managed to get out of the car on his own, and fire crews took him to the hospital with minor injuries, Miller said.

Airlines halted some trips out of Long Beach Airport, LAX and John Wayne International as the first wave of the 150-mile-wide storm rolled into the area.

At about 4:30 p.m., the city of Long Beach closed all public parks due to high winds and falling trees and branches.

“It’s just not safe,” Gerot said.

Crews are also working to rebuild a protective sand berm on the beach, according to Gerot.

“The heavy surf is really causing a lot of beach erosion,” she said.

Around the region

The storm led to at least one fatality, in the San Fernando Valley’s Sherman Oaks neighborhood. A 55-year-old man was electrocuted after a tree branch fell onto power lines and landed on a vehicle.

The man, who was not immediately identified, was apparently touched by the electric line or charged water, police said. The incident occurred on Sepulveda Boulevard, Los Angeles police Sgt. Jack Richter said.

Heavy rain from the storm soaked all of Southern California, including Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Mud spilled onto the northbound lanes of the 101 before 2 p.m., triggering the freeway’s closure at La Conchita, north of Ventura.

Shortly after 3 p.m. flooding was reported on both sides of Highway 138, south of where it meets Highway 2, according to the California Highway Patrol log. There were reports of more than a dozen vehicles stuck.

Flash flood warnings were issued for several areas in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, including communities below the Sand and Fish burn areas. The National Weather Service said vulnerable communities include Sylmar, Monrovia, Azusa, Duarte and the Angeles Crest Highway between Mount Wilson and Mount Waterman.

Besides the 101, the storm has closed beach access roads, among them the Point Dume Beach entrance, the Pacific Coast Highway underpass to Zuma Beach and the Zuma exit to Westward Beach Road.

The storm also prompted a mandatory evacuation order for about 200 homes and an elementary school near the Fish burn area in Duarte and voluntary evacuations for residents in portions of Orange County’s Silverado Canyon. And in response to the ominous forecast, Knott’s Berry Farm, the Mountain High ski-snowboard resort, the Santa Anita Park horse racetrack in Arcadia and the Los Alamitos Race Course at Cypress closed.

Bear Mountain and Snow Summit resorts at Big Bear Lake remained open, as did Snow Valley Mountain Resort near Running Springs. But officials at all three cautioned that menacing winds would sideline some chair lifts. And spokesman John Brice said Snow Valley canceled night skiing.

Along with the gusts, the regional forecast called for 2 to 6 inches of rain to fall in coastal and valley areas, 5 to 10 inches to fall in foothills and mountains, and for 1 to 3 feet of snow to fall in the mountains above 7,000 feet.

As for the airport impacts, those translated primarily into longer waits for passengers.

By noon, 69 flights out of LAX had been delayed, though no flights had been canceled, said Nancy Castles, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles International. But the number of delays was projected to quadruple to 270, with approximately 63 flights being canceled, Castles said in an email.

In Long Beach, American Airlines canceled two of its three scheduled departures. The airport, however, appeared to be less impacted by the weather than others, according to flightstats.com, a flight tracking website.

In Orange County, several airlines canceled flights out of John Wayne Airport. A representative from American Airlines, which canceled 12 flights out of the airport, said John Wayne is expected to be impacted most by the weather because of its shorter runways and strong crosswinds in the area.

Because of the deluge, interim Los Angeles County Health Officer, Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, cautioned residents and visitors to avoid swimming, surfing and playing in the ocean near storm drains, creeks, and rivers because of the bacteria and debris being swept toward the sea by swollen streams.

Potential contamination in those areas could make people ill, he said. The health advisory is to remain in effect until 2 p.m. Monday, and could be extended.

The high, and in some cases eye-popping, amounts of rain did not come as a surprise to weather experts, who have been saying for days that a sort of perfect storm was brewing and expected to explode over Southern California.

“It’s a pattern that we’ve seen pretty much since the beginning of the year, where you have a strong polar jet stream swooping out of the north Pacific,” said Bill Patzert, climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. “And what it’s doing is dragging a low pressure system. It’s pretty intense and it’s definitely taking aim at the Southland.”

That is clashing with a Pineapple Express-style plume of moisture barreling in from the west.

“It’s another one of these atmospheric river events that originates in the subtropics at about Hawaii,” Patzert said.

The result? Copious rainfall. Crazy wind. Crippling snowfall.

“It’s definitely not like ‘Singing in the Rain’ with Gene Kelly,” Patzert said.

No, it’s not the work of El Niño, which turned out to be a bust last winter — at least for the southern part of the state. And the dry La Niña we thought was coming but fizzled out isn’t holding the moisture back, Patzert said.

The absence of both, he said, “has really opened the door for these cold storm events coming out of the north colliding with atmospheric rivers. It’s this type of setup that has brought some of our wettest winters.”

Jeremiah Dobruck is the public safety and breaking news reporter at the Long Beach Press-Telegram. He's a SoCal native who has covered crime, courts and mayhem at news outlets in Los Angeles, Orange County and New York City since 2011.

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